Apache HTTP Server is the most popular web server in the history of the web. A LOT of people have contributed to Apache HTTP over the years. I was one of them for a little while; enough to be listed as a frequent “other major contributor.”
What does that mean? Well, in mid 1996 I was working at the University of Louisville. I was a systems administrator, and during my time there had brought their first web server online.
We had started with NCSA httpd earlier, but soon went to Apache in its infancy in 1995.
We were chugging along in 1996 with web gaining popularity, and for a year or more we had ongoing conversations about how to securely manage and host CGI code for professors, employees, and students without compromising our server security.
I wrote and released suCGI, which was a patch to Apache HTTP. It was a replacement of the CGI module, with a Setuid helper application. It allowed for CGI to run under other accounts than the account running the Apache HTTP Server. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start.
This was rather swiftly noticed by Randy Terbush, who quickly took it and made a hard charge to get it included in Apache. This is what brought me from being an Apache lurker to an Apache Contributor.
Randy and I, with the help of the other contributors, took that basis and created suEXEC, eventually getting it accepted in Apache’s 1.2 release.
I was involved with and had (at the time) cutting edge features in the most popular web server software. What a wild ride!
suEXEC remains to this day. Pretty crazy to think about, but my (and Randy’s, and others’) over 2.5 decade old code is still chugging along.
Also amazing? That the “Beware the Jabberwock” section is still titled that way to this day. Glad my English degree continues to get a little notoriety even after all these years.